Parking Standards Member Briefing on Potential Changes
Parking Australia Members are now able to view the briefing from on potential changes overview to AS/NZS 2890.1:2004 – Parking Facilities – Part 1: Off-street car parking, held online on 18 October 2023.
Feedback on the standard can be made by members directly on the standard via https://comment.standards.org.
Parking Australia thanks Andrew Morse of ptc. for his important role on the relevant Standards Australia committee.
Automated Transcript:
You should be able to share, Andrew, hopefully, and I’ll stop sharing. Yeah, I Just,
We also have a number of life members from Parking Australia here and board directors. So acknowledgement to you all, and thank you for coming. So everyone, I can see Andrew’s screen. Can everyone see Andrew’s screen there? Colleagues? Yep. Looking for you. Craig gives a bit of a, yeah, I can see Craig nodding. That’s great. All the way from wonderful, right? Andrew, over to you. Thank you so much for, for joining us. Lovely.
Thank you, Jeremy. Thank you. Um, so just by way of quick introduction, um, Andrew Mos Morse is my name. Um, I’m managing director of P T C and I’m just using the very first slide as a shameless plug for that, um, because I, um, represent Parking Australia on the Standards Australia panel. So, um, I’ve gotta be always very careful to make sure that I’m wearing that hat, uh, when I’m in that forum and not my sort of general consulting hat. Um, so as Jeremy says today, today is about giving you guys a little bit of a briefing and an update on some of the changes that are happening to part one of as 2 8 9 oh. It’s the sort of the big daddy of the 2 8 9 oh series. Um, with the other little siblings dealing with other matters, which, you know, I’ll just summarise briefly in a moment.
Um, it’s been 20 years since its last update and it’s probably well overdue. Um, and, you know, every now and again, we realize that the world has moved on and the Australian standard is a a little bit behind. So, um, there we go. So David Niver works at Fairfield Council. He’s one of the members of the panel, and he’s quoted as saying this just recently in one of the articles that’s come out, which is one of the challenges in reviewing the standard is in the balance between setting the minimum requirements and what is needed to be dealt with from a design management perspective. And what David means there is essentially a nutshell, the the head scratching problem that the panel have every time we meet with, do we la do we change the standard to sort of, um, keep in line with changes in, in, in the real world, or do we use the standard to contain changes in the real world? And this is where the sort of little, you know, the, the, the standards Australia has to be apolitical and the panel does. But we, we sit in this little bit of tension between trying to contain but also facilitate. And I guess part of that is this public consultation process that we go through before we finalize a standard to make sure that we’re getting that right and that it’s not just a bunch of 10 or so people in a room deciding what happens. But we throw it out to the community and the community has tension in it as well. There’s gonna be those, those that want certain things out of the standard and there’ll be what those that don’t, um, which I can sort of go into a minute, but you can imagine you’ve got users on one end and deliverer deliver deliverers and people in our industry on the other end. And, and sometimes there’s a little bit of tension between those two.
So just to briefly, um, cover off on what we, the, the sort of main point. So I’m not going to bring up the document at all. In fact, I don’t even have access to the draft. The one that I bring up has all the track changes in it, um, from the committee hub. So we don’t wanna look at that. But the idea is not to go through that page by page and to show you what the differences are. There aren’t many actual differences in, in a lot of the texts. I would say 85% of the text remains.
A lot of people know that text very well, but cognizant of not just changing it for the sake of it and tripping people up when they’re trying to get things through the land and environment court or councils, or even just design something that they designed yesterday and change it dramatically today. So the, the sort of six key ones that I thought would, would be of most interest to the Parking Australia forum, um, is the user class, clarifi Clarifi, uh, uh, oh, sorry, I dropped out. I’m back. Um, bit of, um, ambiguity in the current table. Um, we’ve improved sight line around the pedestrian realm that’s wasn’t great in the previous version. Um, we’ve enclosed spaces, we’ve grouped together anything that a parking space that’s got walls or things around it, we’ve grouped and I’ll explain a little bit more what that means in a minute. Um, and that wraps in mechanical parking as well. Uh, the definition of sweat path parameters has been changed for those that are interested in using software to test vehicles, um, improve pedestrian requirements more broadly. And last I’ve saved the best or last ’cause I know that’s gonna be the one that creates most of the debate, um, is the, the, the vehicle and parking space sizes. But I’m gonna tease you and, and make you watch the rest of it.
First. Um, very briefly, the standard, what is it? Well, part one forms part, the first part of the 2 8 9 oh series, um, it deals with the, the series deals with anything to do with parking and, and, and vehicle, um, management on, on sites. So, um, it’s divided into these five sections. There’s a, um, prize for anyone that’s bought the deliberate error. It’s not my error, but it’s just the way that the, they’ve been numbered. Um, we’re dealing with the off street parking, which is normally, as I said at the beginning, it’s the big daddy of the standards. It’s the one that gets used the most. It’s certainly the one that’s most, most, um, ed, uh, in our office in terms of the amount of use it gets. Um, part six I’d say is pretty important as well and getting well used. Um, and anyone that’s doing loading docks is gonna be interested in part two. Um, that’s just to give you context of where this document sits.
And as I say, these five documents tend to get updated every 20 years, which is pretty slow. Um, but, um, considering how long it takes to actually go through the process, it’s pretty much a, a, an ongoing process. And the next one will be updated as soon as part one is is finished. It’s, it’s pretty much a rolling cycle. The update process, um, just so you understand that, is that we, um, we, somebody in the community, it can be in the committee, it can be in the committee nominates the standard is getting too old and needs updating. Um, that nomination goes to Standards Australia. They look at that, they vote on it. Uh, I’m not involved in that process. It’s completely within, um, standards Australia. They decide whether they, that it’s, that the application is valid or not, and it not everything gets through.
You’ve gotta be pretty robust. If you wanna change a standard, the budget gets approved, the committee gets put together. Now, when I say budget, nobody on the committee’s getting any money out of this. It’s purely the budget for the in-house, uh, standards Australia people, um, designers and chair people to, to, to basically have, you know, have their salary looked after while they’re running this particular update.
So that’s all that’s, we’re referring to the committee convenes its workshops. Um, we write the draft that takes many, many, many months because we all work, nobody’s permanently on this panel in a permanent capacity. Um, so we meet, you know, um, every couple of months to begin with. And that wine wrap that’s sort of gets more intense towards the end of the publication. We go to public consultation, that’s exactly where we are right now in terms of part one. Um, we get the comments back probably December, so we’ll reconvene, I suspect early next year. And we’ll go through each of the comments and we’ll group them into similar topics. We’ll either adopt them, reject them, or do a modification of them. And then it goes to the Standards Australia editors, they edit it, make it look like a proper standard, um, and it’s released and we all get to buy it.
Um, so the, the, the public consultation period is, is really important and Jeremy’s done a great job of spreading that news throughout, um, Parking Australia to make sure that we get as much feedback as possible. The press has picked it up because of the parking space size question, so that’s good. We like it when we’ve got more people looking at it. We want to find the comfort zone in that tension between response or containment. And I think we, you know, we’re using the public consultation process to do that in this one. Um, I think I’ve already been through this. I think I meant to change one of these slides to being what the, the, um, panel is, but it doesn’t matter.
We’ll just fire straight in. So, um, this table is gone. So this table causes a great deal of confusion amongst particularly designers because there’s a few land examples here, but they’re not all here. So what do you do if you’ve got something that’s not here? You sort of have to try and reinterpret what these are. So we’ve gone over to a time and a user allocation model. It doesn’t really matter why you’re using a parking space, it’s about how long you’re using it and what the turnover of that space is. Generally speaking, the shorter the turnover, the wider you want the space. The only caveat to that is user allocation. If you use it regularly, then you’re gonna be well practiced at using it. So you can afford to have it maybe a different class to someone, uh, who isn’t used to using it. So your worst case there being short term and unallocated user class five would be the largest. You’ll notice as well that we’ve got rid of the two a’s the one A and I think the three A and, um, figured we may as well just go from one to five.
So that’s important for people that are designing, um, to sort of get their head around what that, um, the difference between that and the old standard. Um, pedestrian sight lines. We’ve got rid of this fairly limited series of requirements around driveways. We all see in the news the number of people that are knocked down, um, around the vicinity of driveways. And the panel is very conscious of that. Um, and, um, come up with a sort of bit of a better strategy for dealing with footpaths. We’ve now got shared paths, so we’ve got faster moving people on two wheels, um, in that zone that was normally a relatively, you know, someone moving at 1.2 meters a second is now moving at sort of five meters a second. So in that same space, depending on what state you’re in. So we wanted to try and cover that. Um, there’s a series of tables and paragraphs that go with this diagram to set those X and Y diameters, but, um, dimensions. But that’s, um, just trying to put a little bit more focus on driveway safety.
The, um, enclosed spaces might be of interest to some of you, some, some designers. We, we, we, in reviewing the old, um, the current version I was of the view, um, that we had similarities in space design dotted out throughout the standard and with different terminologies so that those of you that have designed the garage will know that the aisle suddenly becomes known as an apron, um, out of nowhere. It’s not defined anywhere in the definitions. Um, and it’s treated differently to an aisle, whereas in fact it is a parking aisle. It just has to be perhaps a bit wider because there’s physical constraint around the edge of a garage. So we’ve pulled those things into the same section and we’ve put lift hoists and mechanical parking in there as well. In fact, that blue line could probably go around and pick those two up as well. Anything that you are driving into that has walls immediately around the space should be treated basically the same. So we’ve pulled that together and we’ve given it a better definition within this section.
We’ve pulled car stackers in and mechanical parking into this section. What this standard isn’t is a mechanical parking design standard. So if you are dealing with welding bits of steel together, this is not the document for you. However, if you are pouring concrete to facilitate installing someone else’s steel work, this is important to you. So this is really the space that’s needed around those systems and some requirements for those systems to achieve compliance with Australian Standard. Because what we’ve found is that, you know, people are importing systems from overseas and they’re essentially not meeting any of the parking space dimension requirements and door clearances that are required in part one. So when a someone like me comes to sign that off, or when a user comes to use it, you have to scratch your head and say, well, hang on a sec. Well, how, how did, how did this mechanical space allow to be smaller than the garage next door that are designed under the same standard and have the same expectations around usage purely because it came from overseas.
So this, again, with imports, the standard has to be very careful not to write something that just closes down an entire industry for the sake of it or a particular product. Um, but it sets a series of, um, criteria that a manufacturer must meet. Um, it sets the criteria for who’s designing the concrete shell for these things to go into, whether it’s garages, cage spaces, carports, whatever it is, the standards gonna deal with them in a consistent manner and use consistent language so that designers don’t get confused or can’t cherry pick bits and pieces from the standard as as they choose. So that’s been a bit of a neatening up of this whole section.
Um, we’ve broadened some of the needs around car stackers and we’ve broadened some of the needs around turntables as well because these things are becoming more and more prominent as space gets tighter and tighter. Um, the standard didn’t necessarily deal with those things very well before. So hoping to get some input from people that make these systems, um, and have feedback on operating them to again, find that sweet spot of fairness where the standard is responding, responding to the market, but also not, um, you know, being, being overly um, um, conservative, uh, sweat path definitions.
So we’ve got rid of the templates from the back of the report. These were actually in the 93 version as well as the current 2004 version. And with instructions on how to print them out onto a clear acetate and use them on a one to 200 scale printed drawing and spin them around and do all that. I think we’ve well and truly moved fast the days of doing that. Um, what we’ve done instead is provide the input parameters needed to do is to build this vehicle within a piece of software. Now, as far as I’m aware, there are only two pieces of software that do this, and certainly within the auto ca version, um, analytic O Derek years ago put together the B 85 and the B 99 vehicles that we all in the industry use that library. Um, so we’re in pretty safe territory, um, with, with those things. But having said that, the B 99 vehicle is changing, um, and therefore sweat path design will change. But here are the design parameters. You put that into your turn path software and that’s what we, and that’s what will be accepted now.
Um, acetates put over a drawing will no longer be accepted because they don’t represent these vehicle dimensions anymore. Um, so, and then better definitions of vehicle, um, dimensions as well going in there. And as I say, the the, um, the, the, the, the B 85 is pretty much saying the same. The B 99 is the vehicle that changes. Um, and that’s how when we get to the parking space dimensions, which has really been the thing that’s hit the, the press. One thing I will say very quickly, this is not retrospective. So there’s um, at least one article going floating around that makes a statement, um, that would lead you to believe that you’ve gotta go back and fix existing car parks. Um, it says parking spaces will have to be reline marked to the new dimensions. That is incorrect. You don’t have to do that. Um, if you’re doing alts and additions to an existing car park, the standard applies to the new bit. It doesn’t apply to the existing bit to the degree that there’s a clear separation between old and new. Um, but I I, I don’t want there to be a, um, a, a a a fear or a rumor that this means we’ve gotta go back and redo car parks because if you think about the impacts of that, you actually can’t do it because you make your aisles too narrow and then you’ve gotta add bits to the side of the car park, which we can’t do.
So it isn’t retrospective, but what this does is add another 200 millimeters to the length of the parking space, um, which manifests itself. Well before I move on to that, this is where the user class from before pulls through into here. Um, and how the space width relates to the R width and the, um, corresponding space length, which is now in C three, which is 5.6 meters long. The reason there’s two class fives is you get the choice between a slightly narrower aisle, um, and a wider space or a narrower space in a slightly wider aisle. So that that’s consistent with the old standard. It’s just referred to two, two versions of version of user class five. Um, so what that does is change the beloved figure 5.2, which architects will know very well, um, to introduce that five, that extra 200 millimeters, um, into where does it come in?
I think it’s in the door opening length is where we ended up adding that in terms of the overall length. We also introduced a change to the way that this edge flare is dealt with in the sense that if you’ve got a wider park, an aisle that’s more than the, the minimum, you can reduce this flare down all the way down to seven 50. If you’ve got an aisle that’s 750 mils wider than it needs to be, you can essentially have a column right on the corner of the space ’cause you’re providing the same maneuvering area. It’s better explained in the text below this figure, but I just wanted to include this just to show how that five point, uh, four gets converted to 5.6 and what that means for the, for the standard. So overall, if you are designing a double-sided aisle, which most of the time we’re trying to do, we’re essentially adding in 400 mil to the width of that. Um, that’s a fairly significant change because most capa are more than a single aisle.
Certainly if you’re doing anything like a shopping center or a commuter capa, you’re gonna be at least two wide. So suddenly you’ve got this sort of 800 or multipliers of 400 mil to deal with, um, and um, to deal, essentially what’s happening is the Australian fleet is getting larger. Um, the dual cab ute take up rate is, is probably the biggest sector in sales in Australia.
Um, and it’s in the 2004 version cars were, were growing a little bit within their class, but not significantly, statistically significantly to change the B 99 vehicle and what it had been before. So essentially that stuck around for the last 20 years, probably in the last decade that’s been challenged. Um, and you’ve, you know, if anyone’s driven through particularly Sydney Airport domestic or Melbourne domestic Brisbane domestic airports, you’ll car parks, you’ll see the dual cab Utes poking into the aisle. And when they’re opposite each other, you’re definitely not getting 5.8 meter between the front bumpers.
So it’s been a, a growing issue in the background for a little while now. And, and, and this is now the, the crunch time for the standard to be updated and to see whether it takes this onboard, what the community says. There’s been, just looking at the comments in the press, there’s been a bit of yes and no, um, response to it. And um, it’s really now over to you guys to give us the feedback, um, that we need to, to take the standard forward and, and do, you know, essentially respond to what the community wants. Um, and if that’s by bigger spaces, that’s bigger spaces. If it’s not, um, then, then that’s gonna have to be a, you know, challenging conversation about that.
That’s probably, uh, Jeremy, the end of the briefing in terms of the main, those main key topics. Um, was there anything you wanted to go back through in any more detail? I’m happy we’ve got some time, so I’m happy to, I’m happy to feedback there.
Uh, for people, I think you can raise your hand like at school, but if you’ve got questions to Andrew or just unmute yourself and introduce yourself to everyone. Um, and then we’ll go through questions, Andrew. And I think that was a great briefing. Um, we might also explain Andrew that the best way of actually, um, members or organizations, um, putting in their views about this. ’cause I was explaining to one of the directors this morning, it’s not just a a parking Australia submission that goes in, it’s actually, you’ve gotta go and vote individually, Andrew, don’t you? So do you wanna explain how that works? ’cause it’s a, for those of who’s coming in new to this kind of world, it’s a, it’s quite a com not a complex, but it’s a tick. There’s a, there’s one way of doing it and it’s the standards Australia way of doing it.
So do you wanna explain that, how that works, Andrew? ’cause obviously you were saying to me when we were talking about this in, at, um, outlook last week, which I appreciated. Uh, it’s often, it’s, it’s, it’s the more the merrier really. So do you wanna explain that? Yeah, before we, we, so then I’ll throw the, the, the floor open to what I’m sure is a, a whole bunch of comments from a lot of people.
Yeah. Great. Thanks Jeremy. And I think on your opening slide, you had the link there. Um, I can’t share the link ’cause if I share a link with you, it takes you to my user, um, access to the portal and I don’t actually have access to the public side, but essentially don’t email me. Um, don’t email Jeremy or Parking Australia, um, because, um, go to the link, we’ll put it back up again in a, in a, in a, in a short while.
But, um, go to the Standards Australia website and the public consult consultation link. The reason I say that is because when um, SA gets the results, they’ll bunch them into similar topics so that we’re not having to troll through everybody’s submission, but it will be more around the, there’s a submission on topic A and there are 500 people made the same submission. There’s a comment on topic B and only one person did. And that’s gonna wait us as to what comments we’re, you know, we’re gonna deal with first. Um, rather than just going through individual results. So please go to that link and fill out your own response.
If we do it as Parking Australia, it muddies that process for sa um, on the committee. We then just get a big lump of responses from parking Australia that are all, you know, made up of individual responses all mixed up. So it, it’s just not gonna be, you know, a clear way of doing it. So as Jeremy says, there is one way of doing it, it is the essay way, um, which is that they’re a pretty, uh, strict organization on a lot of these processes. Um, I’m subject to that when I’m, you know, when the panel is, is active. Um, so yeah, if you can do that, but I’m happy to take questions now and as best I can give responses to the reasons why certain decisions have been made so far in the draft and what your process is for then putting in a submission to make your thoughts known, um, and how then those are dealt with.
Thanks Andrew. So, um, people either put your hand up, um, feel like I’m begging my father back at primary school we dealt was a primary school teacher or just unmute yourself or all colleagues. Uh, and if you’ve got questions to Andrew, we’ve got a couple of, we’ve got half an hour and I know there was, there’s been some, obviously some media Andrew about how that would work. So that’s been very helpful. In terms of the 5.6 to the 5.4, is it normal for,
I’ll ask the first question, Andrew. There always has to be a person that does, is it normal for Standards Australia to be going out like this and, and talking about how these work? And also my second question, what was the timeline for some of those other standards within that, within that cohort?
Sure. Okay, I’ll go to the first question. Um, the public consultation period is the process. So that is not, this is not unusual. Um, it normally goes a little bit under the radar when you’re dealing with something like the bike parking standard or the loading dock standard. Um, loading docks don’t quite garner the same passion, um, as car parking unfortunately for the pool loading dock.
But the part two kind of went through without very much little bit of people in the freight world are interested in that because they think, you know, that the, the, the Truckee have to deal with smaller and smaller loading docks. And, and, and there’s a bit of debate there around whether the software has made that worse or better or, so there’s a little bit of noise, but this is not unusual. It, the, the space length thing has garnered more press coverage than any change to the standard normally gets, to be honest. And I think that’s not by accident.
Um, certain, I don’t know who it is that’s talking to the press anonymously because each of the, um, articles that I’ve read have had an anonymous person giving interviews. I suspect I know who it is and I suspect they work for Standards Australia in a very media controlled way of, of trying to get as much response to this as possible.
Um, the second question, how long does it normally take? I think the, the last, the few that I’ve been involved with over the last, that, that probably tells you the average, it’s, it’s probably two years from start to finish. I’d say
Thank you. Uh, James, you had a question.
Thanks, Jeremy. Hey, Andrew. James from a parking, uh, two questions s small spaces. Now everyone says that, that there’s nothing in the Australian standard about small spaces, but they miraculously turn up in all new shopping center car parks in design features. Um, mm-hmm. So just, is there anything being addressed about small parking spaces for smaller vehicles and in the standards this time around?
Yeah, I mean, they are in there. Yeah. Um, My, my second question may explain why I’m asking that question.
Yeah, yeah. They are, they’re in there and they’re in there again. Um, they’re already in there. They’re five meters long and 2.3 meters wide. Um, there’s nothing in the, what the standard doesn’t do is tell anybody how many of something they need. Um, we leave that to councils and the, um, the approving authorities to figure out, uh, so in terms of what’s the percentage of small spaces, the standard won’t dictate that there’s green star stuff that dictates that and all sorts of other reasons. Um, but, uh, certainly spatially it, it does and it will continue to define that.
And so the second part of my question is, um, retrospective. I, I know that you said that it’s not retrospective, uh, from time to time when organizations have to go for planning permits to expand their car parks, so let’s use vicinity or one of the large shopping centers, they have to do a development and they have to redesign their, their third level, but council may require them to provide the planning application for the entire car park. Under, under, what we all would like to expect is that the redesign will only occur on the level that is being impacted. However, um, I’ve had experience where the council will say, no, the planning permit applies to the entire structure or the entire car park. Um, you need to apply for that. And then they’ll say, well, levels one to three don’t comply, uh, with the new standards, how can we as a industry, um, and in this, um, revision deal with how councils, um, manage, manage reapplication con reconfigurations to car parks in when we’re, when it’s not impacting the entire site.
So Chadstone did a massive, uh, events precinct expansion. They took, they changed their top multi deck car park, they’ve added small car base, they’ve done fantastic job with what they had. But if this standard was out when they did it, and if the council was wanting to be difficult, they would’ve had to basically reconfigure the entire building.
Yeah, good question James. And I suspect that you’re get a probably a more accurate answer. Um, because, um, my experience in this has been that the conditions of a consent only relate to the new works being proposed unless the condition has been specifically worded in a particular way, um, which is rare. I’m just trying to think of an example of when I’ve actually seen, um, seen a condition that has said that in terms of the rest of the car park. Um, but as far as I’m aware, the, the, the P C A is, has the final word. Now, if you’re using counsel as your private certifier, then you know, there’s a, there’s an issue there in terms of you’ve got the AAU author, the, the, the, the the consent authority also, you know, being the final arbiter. Um, you’d like to think that a private certifier is sort of able to sit in the middle a little bit. I know their hands are very tied and getting more. So nowadays, my experience has been the new bits are the only bits that the standard applies when it comes to the actual sign off and the construction certificate, the occupation certificate stage with the P C a, so council’s not in the room anymore, is that it’s only only applies to the, to the, to the new spaces.
But you raise an interesting question because if you want to expand a cap back vertically or sideways, and the sideways happens to be by extending the length of the aisles rather than duplicating aisles, the 5.6 throws up an interesting problem about aligning those widths and or the columns that go up through. So it it’s not without its, its problems.
I appreciate it. Thank Thanks Andrew. My, just to clarify my question was really strongly related to when we’ve had a planning permit applicable for 150 bays and, and just like you said, it got extend extended at by another 50 bays and along with all the traffic engineering of, of how many more cars would go through the entry points and all that jazz, they then reviewed every parking space to get access to that parking area apart from just lane widths, it’s also all the parking space sizing as well, which were all compliant in the first permit and all green lighted and then, you know, they paint everything with the same brush for round two. So Yeah, it’s interesting. I wonder what a lot of either a planning lawyer or a, or a certified would say about that.
To me, that sounds like it’s throwing the net unreasonably wide, um, beyond the powers of what the app, you know, the application that’s in front of council. But you know, I’m not a planning lawyer, so
No, thank you for the insights. Appreciate it.
No worries.
Uh, Angelique has a question. Thanks James. Angelique over to you.
Hey Andrew, thank you so much for that. Um, you made those tables look fast, simpler, rather than just measurements, you actually put words and concepts around them. So thank you. Um, I have a quick question in, in relation to a topic that’s deep close to my heart, ev charging stuff. Yes. Are there any, um, any modifications in here that relate to potentially accommodating EV charges in bays? Any, um, provision for extra cabling, uh, curbside for people with wheelchairs or anything like that? Is there anything to address ev charging, whether it’s signage, um, paint color, um, anything like that?
Not directly at the moment. And it’s an area that we want some input on. So the standard, what it, what it, it, it won’t talk about cabling and, and power provision, not this standard. Um, there are other standards that deal with that, um, and substation requirements and, and low peak load and, and those things are dealt with elsewhere. So this standard doesn’t deal with the, the power supply or the data stream or any of that stuff. Um, it also doesn’t define, um, signage. It is the sta it is interested in exit signage, fire exit signage, um, and it has some guidance on directional signage, but it doesn’t get too much into that space. Um, where it is important and I think where the feedback from the industry would be good, and I’ve been talking to a couple of suppliers in, in, in this space because, you know, just walking around the e mobility thing last week, you know, the variety of size in charging equipment, um, is quite extraordinary. And I, um, presume that’s to do with, you know, the type of charge and the speed of charge and all those things. Um, what the standard should be doing, um, is defining the spatial requirements because what will happen otherwise is we’ll get retrofit e v charging into the envelope of the current parking space. So it’s really gonna be up to designers to, um, uh, for the standard to just be adjusted slightly for this topic. And I think, we’ll, we’re relying on this public consultation period to guide us a little bit with that, but for designers to really also take the responsibility to say, if I’ve got a 5.6 long space in a basement, say, and I want to future prove this for charging, I’m gonna have to provide a space beyond the end of the parking space for that unit. And then the wall, um, I don’t know that the standard’s gonna be able to define that space, but what it is going to say and what it already says is you can’t put anything inside this envelope, this three D box that is designed for a car that’s 5.6 log and two and a half wide and 2.2 high, that box is for the car. You can’t put anything in it. So it, it’s, again, it’s one of these areas where the standard doesn’t wanna get political and force a movement on something, but it wants to be able to provide guidance around it if you’re gonna do it. This is the spatial requirements for doing it.
Okay. Um, just because we’ve had, uh, you know, questions from members about consistent signage and the colors that the bays are part, uh, painted, you know, there’s a consistent signage, so simple things like signage. And I’ve actually seen one situation where an EV charger was suspended, was, um, actually fixed to the ceiling above.
Yeah, okay. Yeah.
Which actually breached a whole lot of other fire safety issues because the cabling penetrated, it was near, um, a fire sprinkler, all sorts of other things. Um, but if there was even just starting with signage and, and colors and stuff like that or, um, yeah, something along those lines might be, um, a good starting point before you can get the size of the bays.
Yeah. Okay. Great. Thank you. Thanks.
Thanks Angelique. Any other questions? We’ve got a little bit of time folks. There’s a whole, uh, George Scotty Sander, welcome George, over to you.
Thank you. Um, I was just wondering, you’ve hit the highlights and thank you for that, but I’m just wondering whether or not, uh, you’ve taken the chance to add some more guidance in terms of size of facility, uh, and the issues of entry and exit lanes and queuing for that.
Has anything changed there?
Yeah, so there’s been some simplification around the queuing description. Um, essentially there were some errors in the previous version where actually if you do the maths you end up with some quite extraordinary access length requirements. Um, so that’s been simplified, um, a little bit. Again, the standard doesn’t dictate size, you know, number of spaces in any way, but just if you have this number of spaces, this is the response you should have in your design. Um, so it’s, it’s addressed that it’s also, um, the section that deals with, um, access control has been changed as well to, um, acknowledge the fact that L p R doesn’t provide the same delays that a ticketed system used to. Um, so there’s a, it’s not free flow, but there’s a little bit more grace there in terms of, um, the number of vehicles that can be processed through and access if those systems are used. So there, there are some changes in there to look out for. Um, again, it’s not how to design, um, access control, but um, it, it, it’s providing authorities I guess with a little bit of, uh, a safety net when they’ve got an applicant coming to them with either, you know, normally not enough Q space to be able to say, Hey guys, if you’re gonna put in the system, you’re gonna need a Q length of whatever the standard says unless you can argue and prove it otherwise. Thank you.
Great, thank you George. Anyone else? We’ve got people here. I’m just looking down this list from councils, universities, healthcare providers, um, operators. There’s a whole bunch of people, so no. Andrew, before we let people then wrap, is there anything else that you would like to, just, is there anything else that you’ve not mentioned or that you wanna just reiterate to people? Obviously that link comments, um, which I’ll put in the chat for everyone is there, if you’d like to, um, input your submission, you do need to create a log, which is a bit of a, always a bit of a challenge and that it’s essentially Andrew voting or, um, putting a comment in. So I’m sure many people you’re used to doing that, but it’s quite an involved process. Uh, did you have any other thoughts, Andrew, or before I other people? Any final observations or questions to you?
No, I think I would just, again, I’d just encourage anyone with a comment to, to have a look through the document and make comments because nothing worse than once this is published, it’ll be at least a decade before it’s looked at again. Um, and as a member group, um, of parking Australia, you have quite a, you know, you’ve now got the opportunity to have a bit of sway over that look for any things that aren’t clear, any ambiguity, anything you disagree with, anything that you can see on the horizon in the technology world that standard needs to be aware of. Um, things are changing quite quickly. You know, the sort of certainly the mechanical parking world has crept up on, on the standard over the, over the years and it’s now time to catch that up a little bit.
So if there’s any, um, technologies or things that you’re aware of that would affect, again, I’m coming back to this phrase about the concrete. If it affects the concrete of a structure of a carpark layout, these are the things we’re interested in, um, making sure that architects and traffic engineers and designers know when they’re reading this and they’re looking at those dimensions is giving them clarity on what they’ve gotta provide so that when others come along, normally at the very end of the job to install the systems that are gonna manage the car park that they’re gonna fit and they’ve been allowed for in the design. So, um, that’s I think where, and, and from a council perspective that there’s enough rigor in the standard and clarity that when someone brings you something that doesn’t comply, you can clearly point to the standard and say, well, it doesn’t comply with this. Um, there’s been a lot more should introduced into the standard this time round rather than shall, so just look out for that, that sort of places a bit more emphasis on clients rather than just, well, as long as you’re close to this, you’re okay. So, um, but I just encourage that type of look through before you, um, before this, this period runs out, which I think is first half of November isn’t 10th ninth Yeah. Closes your right entry the ninth. We’re not Friday the 9th of November, so couple, well a month.
The reason we wanted to do this briefing now just for everyone is, ’cause obviously there was outlook last week and it was great at Andrew, I was able to jump up on stage quickly and have a bit of a chat, but obviously the, the, the standard wasn’t put out I think only a couple weeks ago. So Andrew and I had a bit of a chat and then we, um, wanted to give people an opportunity just to get their heads around it and then, um, have that briefing. Now, uh, George you had another question, we’ll come back to you. Thank you for that, Andrew. That was great. George, back to you.
Yeah, I’ll, I’ll push my luck with the second question.
You can ask as many questions as you like Andrew did,
Did you see the need or have you made any changes, um, or clarified the requirements for opposing turning vehicles at the end of an aisle?
Well, that’s a good question. It sounds like you’re talking about the, the aisle extension or the um,
No, just literally The ability turnaround Maneuvers at the end of an aisle at, at a 90 degree bend.
Yeah. Uh, so we’ve, we’ve got rid of, um, oh, you’re talking about opposing movements. I will just cover off on a different topic if I can quickly, while I think of an answer to yours. Um, the, the, the current version of the standard has the one meter art extension, which it, if you read it, it refers to landscaped areas can step in adjacent to the parking spaces. So you get a little notch at the end of the aisle rather than the entire sort of width of the parking area extending. We’ve got rid of that, um, because it was being interpreted as you could have walls basically at the end of the aisle that come in and step in the sweat paths don’t work, you can’t get in and outta the spaces. So, um, we’ve got rid of that. We’ve pulled that back to the full, full full extent of the, of the, um, car parks and the aisle. So, um, that’s what I thought the question was, but I think the question is, what do you do about opposing sweat pads when you’ve got a 90 degree bend? Is that George? Is that what I’m
Correct.
Am I accurate there? Okay. Um, it deals with it as it always has done in on, on ramps and, and in in that context it doesn’t deal with it in terms of opposing aisles. Now if you’ve got the larger user class, um, the 6.2 aisles, you will almost achieve that. You won’t achieve it with the 5.8 aisles. So where you’ve got two 5.8 aisles meeting at a 90 degree or a T junction, you are gonna get, um, overlapping sweat paths. Um, from a design, from a practitioner, um, perspective, I’ve never really had a problem with that where sight lines are clear because to me that sort of pinched arrangement is what slows people down, Um, rather than big sweeping radii on the corners that you can just continue to go around knowing that there’s nothing coming the other way. Because regardless of whether there’s another car coming or not, there’s generally always a pedestrian somewhere in that area.
So, um, my feeling on it is that’s okay to have, uh, overlapping paths in those areas because it’s what helps keep keep things down. It does take a little bit of courtesy when people have realized, ah, I’ve pulled into this situation and the other person can’t pass or I can’t pass, one of us is gonna have to stop. Um, and that, that, that’s sort of the way they work. Just caveating that though, if you are designing and you’ve got a big circulation loop that’s serving 3000 parking spaces in a, in a Westfield or whatever, then yes, you’re gonna wanna consider whether that’s a good design outcome or not.
It’s really then up to the designer say, well, there’s the standard sets, the bare minimum. That doesn’t mean that’s all I’m stuck with. I can go bigger, I can facilitate a better situation if I create more space. Um, the standard can’t really describe all of those, a clear set of dimensions based on all the different scenarios. Does that answer the question, George?
Yes. Thank you.
Okay. Last call for questions. Otherwise we’ll let everyone get back to the afternoon. This is still even know, hang on, might not be afternoon for you yet Perth, but, and other folk in the West. But anyone else, anything else from anyone else before we thank Andrew and, and your respective times for today? We’ll, obviously, um, and again, that link is comment standards.org au and it’s on the, um, the chat now. So just, but you can just go to the Standards Australia website.
There’s actually a news article on, on the front page that talks about this, uh, standard and then there’s a link directly to where you need to log in. But last call for questions, otherwise we’ll wrap like three seconds of silence. Uh, thank you everyone for coming along, uh, board directors. Thank you.
I think we’ve got at least a couple of life members here today, so thank you very much. But Andrew, for all your work, it’s, as you said, it’s a voluntary position and on behalf of the, the board and I can see Angelique and, and at least James and Bart and I think there’s some other directors here, uh, indeed. Um, thank you very much for your voluntary participation on behalf of the entire industry. Um, I’ve learned a lot more about math in the last hour than I probably ever did in, in high school, so there’s some things there for me to go away and reflect on, uh, as a history student, but, um, there’s lots there and obviously, um, with the turnout, looking at those numbers today, uh, and I’m sure people will be interested in in going onto the website, so thank you for all your work. It’s, um, it’s unheralded work, but it’s really important work and someone that’s coming from these, from the outside looking into the industry, it’s, it’s bizarre.
You start having conversations with people and, and, and, and it’s so real.And as, as people like Ange and others talk about, we actually do touch many, many, many points and, you know, 200 mil doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s a lot. And um, I know that that’s something that, you know, has been getting a lot of press, but there’s all the other things that go with it. 67 pages, it changes. So, um, potentially. So thank you, uh, George, thank you for the op. That’s very nice, the feedback. Uh, folk, we’ll let you go back to your afternoon. Um, again, thanks very much for coming along. Thank you for your, uh, membership of parking Australia. It’s appreciated.
Have a good rest of your week and uh, we’ll be in touch very soon. Andrew, thanks again. Thanks Jeremy.
Thanks everyone. Take care. Byebye for.
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